


Learning to dance can have it's difficulties.

by InterPlanetaryGirl



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: And he's not dead - he never died, Anyway he comes back and....stuff, But then Rick comes along, F/M, Jem can dance, Kieren can't dance, M/M, Simon can dance, and he's embarrassed by it, he just left but his dad still died, so slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 14:09:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3175666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InterPlanetaryGirl/pseuds/InterPlanetaryGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Kieren it's not that hard." Simon declared as he followed him to stand behind where Kieren was sat on the couch. <br/>	"What isn't? Dancing?" Jem asked as she turned her attention away from the screen - not that she foud it interesting anyway - to look at Simon curiously.<br/>	"Yeah, and Kier won't even let me teach 'im." </p>
<p>Simon teaches Kieren to dance a little before somebody turns up on their door.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learning to dance can have it's difficulties.

Simon and Kieren had both agreed the previous day - before they had left for the bungalow - that they would come around the next day for Sunday Lunch when Sue had asked them.

So they had sat through the meal, Kieren only eating a little, to the surpised looks of his parents and Jem when he hadn't started throwing up black bile when he did eat a slice of beef and a yorkshire with a few spoonfulls of mash. (He wasn't going to push himself, but since his mum makes the best mashed potatoes, all creamy and buttery, so he pushed himself just slightly. That was until Simon had given him raised eyebrows, knowing that he needed to stop before he did throw up.)   
Somehow, the conversation got onto bands, and then leavers proms, and then dance music, and then onto dancing itself. And Kieren wasn't surpirsed when he found that Simon could dance, in fact, it turned him on slightly. And when they were clearing the dishes while Jem talked about her leavers prom, Kieren said that he couldn't dance to Simon who turned to him with a slightly shocked and disgusted look at the fact he can't dance. "And why not?" he asked when he placed the dish, he was supposed to be putting in the cupboard, on the side. 

Kieren shrugged. "Never really learnt - there was never much point to it." Simon nodded in understanding, because he did; he knew how Kieren's former love/not-really-boyfriend-yet-they-sometimes-kissed-even-though-they-weren't-supposed-to-see-each-other had gone off to the army when they were sixteen, and how he had died - the cause of Kieren's own death - and then come back to be what he and Amy considered to be even more of an asshole than before he died (according to the stories he heard from Amy before he met and asked Kieren himself) before randomely upping and leaving again out of the blue for no reason after the he had come back and was in Roarton for a week at the very most with no explanation. It was also at that point, Kieren had told him, that he could see where Amy was coming from when she said he was a dick. 

"Well we can't have that." Simon decided, his face set with a look that showed he was going to teach Kieren to dance whether he liked it or not. 

"It's, uh, probably not the best idea." Kieren said as he smiled shyly, backing away slowley as he tried to escape the kitchen. 

"Kieren, you know how I never push you to do anythiing?" Kieren nodded, a hopeful look appearing on his face. "Yeah, yer learning how to dance. Now. In the kitchen. Or living room." Simon told him as he tried to take his arm and pull him twards him. But Kieren managed to dodge out of the way as he started to make his way quickly to the living room where he settled on the sofa next to Jem. "Kieren it's not that hard." Simon declared as he followed him to stand behind where Kieren was sat on the couch. 

"What isn't? Dancing?" Jem asked as she turned her attention away from the screen - not that she foud it interesting anyway - to look at Simon curiously.

"Yeah, and Kier won't even let me teach 'im." Simon said with a hint of hurt in his voice, that usually would have Kieren agreeing to whatever it was usually that Simon was trying to make him do. But not this time. He would have to try a bit harder than that.   
Jem gave her brother a push saying "Seriously, it's not that hard - even I can do it." She stood up and walked around the sofa to where Simon was and looked at him, motioning with her hands if it was okay for her to dance with him and show Kieren that it really wasn't that hard. Simon nodded and positioned his hand on Jem's waist and clasped her hand and she put her other hand on his shoulder. "Watch this little brother." she told him as SImon started to lead her around the room in a simple waltz as Kieren watched them after a small protest that he wasn't younger than her. And he had to admit that they were right - it did look easy, incredibly so in fact. 

When the doorbell rings, Kieren stands up saying "I got it." but Jem just lets go of Simon and blocks his path. "Oh no, you are going to dance by the time I get back or during." She points at Simon who is stood, waiting patiently for Kieren, with an expectant look. He sighs and walks over to him as Jem goes to see who is at the door.

***

When she opens the door, glancing back at Simon teaching Kieren to dance as he leans in close to tell him what to do with a small smile on her face. But when she turns to the door, she does not really like who she finds standing there. Because Rick Macy, who's geatest gift to the town is probably how quickly and quietly he can disappear, is stood at the door with plain dark jeans and a leather jacket on over a t-shirt. She doesn't know what to do other than look at him in a way that she knows will make him uncomfortable. 

After a minute or so of Rick shifting awkwardly, he clears his throat and says "Ren home?" at which Jem moves so that he can't look in the front room, where she predicts Kieren and Simon are probably kissing by this point, or at the least, dancing way too close for Jem's comfort. 

"What's it to you?" she asks him, slight sneer to her voice, not that she cares. 

"Well I was wondering if I could speak to him...?" Rick asks, too hopeful for Jem's particuarly sour mood at this point. And that is when Amy Dyer, the beautiful genius everybody could count on to make them smile, came bounding up in one of her colourful dresses, practically dragging Phillip by the looks of it.

"Jem, where are they?" she asks, as she barges past Rick, only giving him a simple snarl at her lip before she smiles brightly at Jem. 

"In here, though I'd want to warn them before you walk in - Simon was teaching Kier how to dance, and you know those two." she says with a light air about her, stepping aside to let Amy and her giant skirt through, and then she turns to Rick as the door is opened. "What do you want to talk to him about?" she sighs the question after another few seconds of impatient waiting as she looks at him with a bored expression. 

"I just want to speak to him Jem." Rick sighs back at her. 

"Fine, come on." She opens the door and leads him through to the living room where Phillip is now showing Amy that, he too, can dance a simple waltz. And her dress swirls pretty wide that Simon pulls Kieren in closer so he doesn't get hit - even if it wouldn't hurt - whispering something in his ear at the same time that makes what little flowing blood he does have, rush to his cheeks to form a slight (so slight you wouldn't notice it unless you were used to his normal complexsion lately) blush. "Dead man walking." Jem announces to the others as she walks over to the sofa and leans against the back on it next to Kieren and Simon. 

"Jem, you still can't call him that. It's the _un_ dead." Amy corrects her as she comes to a stop, keeping a hold of Phillip's hand as she walks through to the kitchen, announcing that she wants to get something to eat because that dancing just gave her an appetite. Kieren feels Simon's arm curl around him slightly tighter and Jem glaring him out, Kieren...well he doesn't know what to do - he's over what feelings he had for Rick, realised that throughout their school life, and after, he was a bit of an asshole with the way that he treated Kieren around everybody else and then he left again without so much as a goodbye. 

"What do you want Rick?" Kieren asked, supressing his anger so he can try to have a mature conversation and not let his feelings get the better of him. 

"I, um, just wanted to talk to you." He says as casually as he can before adding, obviously not noticing he was not subtle the way he said. " _Alone_." 

"Why?" Kieren narrows his eyes at Rick as he slumps further down against the back of the sofa, so that, once again, Simon's breath is on the back of his neck because he had slumped before Kieren had. 

"Will you just speak to me Ren?" he asks with, slight depseration in his voice. 

"Fine." Kieren grumbles, removing Simon's hand from his waist, at the same time as squeezing it slightly and kissing his cheek before whispering "I'll be two minutes, then you can finish teaching me to dance, okay?" To which Simon replies with a simple "Okay."

***  
Kieren led Rick outside, standing with his arms folded over his chest as he waited for Rick to start speaking about what was clearly so important that he needed to be dragged away from having fun with his friends, sister, and getting dancing lessons (which he decided were pretty fun) from his boyfriend. After he didn't speak for a good two minutes, Kieren started to get edgy, snapping at him with a simple "Well?" That seemed to snap Rick out of organizing his thoughts about what he was going to say, but Kieren could care less at this moment in time. 

"The thing is Ren, I'm not dead anymore - or even partially. I'm alive, and well. And that means that we can be together, right? Because now my dad isn't there to get in the way or stop me from doing what I really want." 

"And what would that be exactly?" Kieren asked with raised eyebrows.

"Be with you, of course." Rick answers obviously, his eyebrows scrunching together in a way that, had this been high school, Kieren would have found adorable, but now he just finds it rather annoying.

"Yeah, well, I think my boyfriend - that I am very happy with - would have something to say about that." Kieren says with a sarcastic tone. 

"You mean that guy in there?" Rick says sceptically. 

"Well, considering he had his arm around my waist, and was teaching me to dance, and I kissed on the cheek, and was holding hands with me - as well as taking me out on several dates with food just for me since he's not warming up yet but I am - yes I would say that he is my boyfriend." Kieren answers, the sarcasm in his tone becoming more obvious the more he speaks. 

"But what's so good about him?" Rick asks, slight disbelief in his tone. 

"He isn't ashamed of me," he gives a pointed look at Rick. "he saved my life, him and Jem get on _great_ , he loves me, I love him, he gave up pretty much the only family he had known because it was them or me, he loves me, almost snapped Gary's neck because he tried to attack me even though it was _literally_ the first day we had met. And what was the final one again?" He puts a finger to his chin for a moment as he pretends to think for a minute. "Oh yeah _he loves me_. And _I love him_." Kieren says with as much love and devotion in his voice. Almost as much as when Simon calls him incredible. Rick pulls Kieren towards him and pressed his mouth to Kieren's, who is trying to get away from his grip and his kiss. He does not kiss back, not in the slightest. The only person he will kiss like the way Rick is trying to with him, is Simon. So he manages to pull away after thirty seconds of trying. 

"Do you still love him?" Rick looks hopeful that what he just did changed Kieren's mind, but Kieren just looked at him with shock that he just had the audacity to ask him if he still loved Simon. 

"Of course I do!" Kieren answers with hand gestures that show what he can't get across in words because he is just so confused that Rick thought that would change his mind of who his heart belongs to. "I learnt a while ago, after you left for a second time, that you were an asshole Rick, I just didn't think you'd go as far as trying to take me away from what makes me happy." he says with slight disgust in his tone. 

"But....you love me." Rick says, not wanting to accept defeat, and in that moment, Kieren felt sorry for him - he knew what it was like to love somebody who didn't love you, because he had done the same since he was fourteen with the very person trying to declare his love for him now.   
"No I don't Rick, I love Simon with everything I am. And I won't stop loving him until he asks me to." Kieren says with sympathetically raised eyebrows and a tiny smile to himself - this sounds like the kind of thing Simon would say to him while they were alone, in the dark back at the bungalow (since Amy and Phillip live in Phillip's house, and Shirley lives with her long-term crush: Doctor Tom Russo). He turned back to go into the house, saying a small "Goodbye Rick." as he closed the door behind him, leaving a sad, lonely Rick outside, defeated that he didn't take his lost love sooner. Maybe it would have turned out different Rick thinks as he makes his way back to the B&B.   
  
***

When Kieren got back inside, he walked straight past the four of them, Jem dancing with Phillip and Amy with Simon as he quickly makes his way upstairs, brushing his teeth furiously hoping to make the sensation of Rick's mouth pressed against his go away, the small nips that Rick took at his lips to try coaxing him into opening them were not visable, but he culd still feel them, and it made him cringe he was that uncomfortable. 

When he made it back downstairs, Simon, Amy and Phillip were sat on the sofa, seeming to have given up on dancing now, only enough room for then three of them if Amy sat on Phillip's lap, while Jem (and several food items even though Sunday Lunch had been barely an hour ago) took the armchair, leaving room for Kieren on Simon's lap. Which Kieren isn't all that fussed about as he settles himself easily, leaning back into Simon's chest as Simon wrapped his arms around his waist, saying quietly in his ear "How was learning to dance for the total two minute lesson that you had?" Simon chuckles. 

Kieren just turns to him, whispering back "It's not without it's difficulties." before leaning forward to press his lips to Simon's, basking in the comfortable warmth (metaphorically) that was there, specially for him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted to write something where Kieren realises he deserves something better than Rick and I thought Simon teaching him to dance would be kinda cute (???? I dunno) Anyway, please comment because I want to hear what you have to say.


End file.
